ABUSES IN FEEDING. 



96 



and brain. Sudden death on any hurried exertion is 

 far from rare, and life, from the diflBculty of enjoying it, 

 is any thing but desirable. 



(82.) Abuses in Feeding. — The custom of over- 

 feeding was carried to an absurd extent on the promul- 

 gation of Bakewell's method, nothing less being aspired 

 to than the glory of laying seven or eight inches of 

 fat on the ribs of sheep. This folly however had its 

 day : the ridiculous parts of the system have to a great 

 extent disappeared, while attention to the production 

 of an increased quantity of mutton, without too great 

 an abundance of fat, has remained to prove to the 

 world the value of the benefits which the English 

 farmer conferred upon his country. Overgrown sheep 

 are indeed good for nothing ** save" in the words of 

 Meg Dods, *' to obtain premiums at cattle shows, and 

 deluge dripping-pans with liquid fat ;" and in this everj 

 one will agree, excepting always boarding-school 

 cooks, and others who depend for their principal per- 

 quisites on the over-roasting of oily meat ! The fat, 

 though not reckoned as offal in the slaughter-house, 

 will speedily show itself as such in the kitchen, by the 

 waste during the cooking process, even in England 

 where fat meat is so much admired ; and it is surely 

 absurd to pay the price of good mutton for tallow, 

 when if the latter were really wanted, it could be pro- 

 cured at a cheaper rate by itself, than when forming 

 part of a dear commodity. The only way in which over- 

 fat meat can at all be reckoned profitable, is in its appli- 

 cation to the wants of the working classes, whose bodily 

 labour enables them to enjoy what would to others 

 prove displeasing in the extreme, and to digest and 



